To dispose, first, of a few minor matters, it is simply disingenuous to say that you don't defer to "authority figures". I can, I suppose, understand your terse reply - "Appeal to authority"- when I mention the conclusions of Aristotle and Kant. After all, neither agrees with you that it is illogical to believe in a Creator. It's so much easier simply to ignore opinions that contradict your own; especially when their authors are intellectual giants. Yet, in apparent support of your own position, you are willing to invoke the authority of William of Occam. Perhaps you are not There is a huge distinction. To begin with, Occam's razor is a logical argument, while you merely gave the opinions of Kant and Aristotle. You apply the razor to your life all the time.
Suppose you and a friend comes across two cars. One car has its front side smashed in and the other car, in front of the first, has its back side smashed in. The front of the fist car is up on the back of the second car. There is glass everywhere around it.
Which is more logical to suppose? That the cars independently got in two different wrecks, without bothering to get fixed, and happened to park in a spot full of glass, with the first car having parked very close to the second car so that it's touching it? Or perhaps that aliens transported from another galaxy a replica of a wreck and planted it on that spot to mark the place where the giant invisible dragon died. Or that the cars got into a wreck?
While the first two options are technically logical, since they involve the more complicated route to get to the present scenario, since they involve more improbabilities for their existence, we are forced to conclude upon available evidence that the third is the most likely.
What is more likely - that some invisible sky-daddy created the universe and everything in it (nevermind who created him), or that all in the universe was created by natural processes. What evidence does either Aristotle or Kant give for the first option?
And speaking of Aristotle, wasn't some of his philosophical observations destroyed by actual science, i.e. Galileo and his experiment at Pisa? Yet you would still call the man an "intellectual" giant? Obviously, that intellect did not feel the need to go out and observe his own "laws".
I will give you this - in saying it was "more logical" I did mean "likelier". I do hope this might clear up some of the confusion. This should nullify your next paragraph.
Your understanding of "evidence" is superficial. You fail to see that your interpretation of the evidence is just that - an interpretation. One man looks out upon the glory and might of the universe and finds evidence for God; another finds evidence for a self-sufficient mechanism. But, again, you are fooling yourself if you think that the difference in these interpretations of the same data is a matter of logic.
One man can also see the glories of the universe and feel that truly the alien race who created all of this must have been powerful. I bet they're green too! Just like plants! Plants are evidence of green aliens!
Surely you must see how ridiculous the notion is of the "glory and might of the universe" being evidence for a creator's existence without even being examined. Especially an arbitary creator such as the one many theists assign.
I'm not sure what to say about your thoughts on the question, "Why is there something, rather than nothing?" Because of your perspective the question that has for millenia engaged the world's most brilliant minds is to you "devoid of meaning". How sad.
You don't know what to say so you insult me? Now
that is sad. And why should anyone care about the one question that for millennia its answer has been sought out? I mean, people for millennia have also been looking for evidence of a higher being - so then would the atheist position be sad to you too? Is there a stop to the ad hominem?
Surely you see that your "There is no 'why' - only 'how'" is wrong on its face? Science asks and answers "why" questions all the time: "Why is the sky blue?", "Why do objects fall?", etc. They are, of course, equivalent to "What causes the sky to appear blue?", "What causes objects to fall?". Thus the "Why?" question about the universe is tantamount to "What caused the universe?".
Does it really ask why? Or how? There is a difference. Why implies a reason, while how implies a cause. There's no problem with looking at what caused the universe, but there is no "why" behind it. There's no reason for its existence, but it is there, so now we figure out how it came to be there.
You grant meaning to the former questions because science can answer them. You deny meaning to the latter because science cannot.
